Santa Rosa Area: The Italian Community
Figure 1: Vicinity Map, Santa Rosa
Figure 2: Peter Maroni and August Deghi (Italian Immigrants) on the future arch of the St. Rose Church, ca. 1900
Context: The Italian Community of Santa Rosa. 1880-1945
Theme
Italians are the one ethnic group that has left significant and recognizable traces of its history in
Santa Rosa's present-day built environment. These resources fall into two main categories,
historically Italian residential neighborhoods with some long-standing Italian businesses, and the
products of the local Italian-dominated basalt industry—the impressive stone buildings of
Railroad Square and others, and remains of the quarrying industry itself. Santa Rosa, of course,
had a branch of the Bank of Italy, and local "boss" Natale Bacigalupi was one of its directors,
but the Italian imprint in Santa Rosa was made by working people, not in politics or the
professions (the first Italian named mayor was Charles DeMeo, 1966). The history of the Italian
community has been documented mainly by Gaye LeBaron, whose Santa Rosa; A Nineteenth
Century Town and Press Democrat articles on the canneries and the basalt industry are the
main sources for the following discussion.
LeBaron gives histories of the major ethnic groups of early Santa Rosa: Irish and German and
smaller European contingents, who had ethnic clubs and some degree of job specialization, but
no clearly defined or enduring ethnic neighborhoods; Afro-Americans, always very few in the
Southern-dominated town; Native Americans, who found their way into the written record mainly
as farm laborers; Japanese, who drew respectability from Kanaye Nagasawa's success at
Fountaingrove; and Chinese, who had a large and recognized community around Second and D
Streets by the turn of the century. This Chinatown, however, was ground down by anti-Chinese
and red-light abatement activities over the years (Sonoma County Historical Journal, Summer
1970, p. 7), and all physical traces were obliterated by urban renewal in the 1960s, leaving the
large "Italian Town" of Westside as Santa Rosa's only historic ethnic neighborhood.
In LeBaron's account of the nineteenth-century immigration (LeBaron, 1985, p.83-86), “the
county census for 1870 showed just one Italian-born citizen in a population of 2,834…The
irrepressible Italians, welcomed as a labor force for their industry as well as their thrift, began to
arrive in significant numbers about 1885. With so many of them coming from the marble
quarries of Carrara in the province of Tuscany, Northern Italy, the fine hand of the Toscano
workman would change the face of the land with his stone wineries and hop kilns and hotels.
“…the worldwide depression and the political situation in newly unified Italy sent thousands of
immigrants off to America. …Sonoma County, similar in terrain and climate to Northern Italy,
attracted large numbers of Northern Italians, and many settled in the rural areas of the county
where they soon engaged in grape growing and winemaking. The 'urban' Italian population of
Santa Rosa settled into the area along the SF & NWP railroad tracks and west of Santa Rosa
Creek extending to the arable delta land of the Piner District toward the laguna.
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“The ridge east of the valley running all the way to Sonoma contained basalt deposits which
supplied paving stones for San Francisco streets. Many of the men who had hoped to escape
the quarries found themselves working once again as blockmakers, carting the heavy stones
down the hill to the railroad in ore cars running on steep tracks. The blockmakers, usually single
men, lived in boarding houses at Melitta Station and along the Sonoma Road until they saved
the money for a piece of land of their own…
“…An Italian-language paper, Echo de Santa Rosa, was published for a brief period in the
1880s, and by 1889 there were nearly 200 Italians in Santa Rosa. Frugoli, Buzzini, Pedrazzi,
Pedrotti, Casassa, Balbi, Lagomarsino, Giorgi, Righetti, Silvestro, Vanucchi—the west Santa
Rosa address list read like a Mediterranean litany in the 1890s.”
Deanna Paoli Gumina's history of the Italian immigration to San Francisco notes the same
reputation for hard work and frugality, the same characteristic occupations (truck farming,
stonework, scavenging, produce markets), and the same tendency for immigrants from a given
region to settle together, to seek out areas reminiscent of the home terrain, and to be "slow to
become Americanized, preferring to Italianize their surroundings." She notes that those who
immigrated directly to the Pacific coast were usually comparatively skilled and prosperous, since
the trip was expensive, and from those regions most likely to embark from Genoa and Sardinia,
where the earliest direct passenger services originated. She credits the establishment of the
Italian Swiss Agricultural Colony at Asti in 1881 with turning the attention of more and more
Italian immigrants to the North Bay agricultural counties in the 1880’s (The Italians of San
Francisco, 1850-1930, 1978, pp.35, 7-11, 133).
The Italian immigration to Santa Rosa coincided with the development of the basalt industry in
the 1880s, when stone paving was in great demand in the Bay Area. James McDonald, brother
of Santa Rosa's leading capitalist Mark McDonald, owned basalt-bearing land east of town. In
the late 1880s the McDonalds arranged for Southern Pacific to establish a line (the Santa Rosa
and Carquinez Railroad) through the basalt area with stations near the quarries at Kenwood,
Annadel, and Melitta, and the Santa Rosa terminus on McDonald property at 13th and North
Streets, where a stone-based warehouse survives. The quarries remained in Anglo-American
ownership (McDonald, Wymore, Grey, Flynn, Tracy), but the quarry workers, blockmakers, and
stone masons were predominantly Italian, and so were the contractors and brokers of stones
and labor. LeBaron enumerates four master builders active in Santa Rosa around the turn of the
century, Peter Maroni, Natale Forni, Massimo Galeazzi, and Angelo Sodini, who more or less
controlled the industry as an on-and-off consortium. The Carnegie Library and Jack London's
Wolf House are attributed to Forni, St. Rose Church to Maroni, the stone House to Galeazzi,
and the Railroad Square buildings (NWP depot, freight depot, Western and La Rose Hotels) to
the group collectively. The basalt-block industry is supposed to have died out after about 1912
as wages rose and automobiles required smoother streets (LeBaron; Peterson, National
Register nomination for Railroad Square). In its heyday, it is estimated that 10,000 blocks a day
were shipped out of the three Santa Rosa area quarries, two carloads a day from each station.
According to LeBaron's informants, blockmakers were paid $22 per thousand blocks, twice that
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in later years. There were settlements of blockmakers around the stations, as well as at
Massimo Galeazzi's Rincon Hotel (Stone House) closer to town.
In town, Santa Rosa's Italians clustered in the produce, grocery, and wine businesses. They do
not seem to have dominated large-scale viticulture and winemaking in the immediate Santa
Rosa area, where the major wineries were Fountaingrove and Isaac DeTurk's (see DPR 523
forms). Sanborn maps show a number of small basement and backyard wineries in the
Westside, Ripley, and West Third Street neighborhoods, sometimes in connection with hotels or
restaurants; and other Italian residents worked as employees in DeTurk's and other wineries.
DeTurk's was located next to the tracks and Italian Westside neighborhood. So were the
California Packing Corporation (succeeded by Poultry Producers of Central California after
192S: see Railroad Square District), Max Reutershan's Tannery (on the creek at the foot of
Madison Street), Santa Rosa Bottling Works, and, before it burned in 1909, the Santa Rosa
Woolen Mills, all major employers of Westside residents.
There were Italian restaurants, bakeries, and groceries both in the Westside area and in the
central business district (see Westside, West Third Street, and North Railroad District research
files); proprietors, clerks, waiters, and cooks all came from the westside neighborhoods. Natale
Bacigalupi, "boss" of the Italian
community for decades, who assisted immigrants with loans, brokered jobs and stones and
"wine from the many small vintners doing business west of the creek," had as his primary
business a grocery on Third Street which "along with Bertolani's Grocery on Fourth, became the
center of Santa Rosa's Italian community" (LeBaron, p.85). In the Westside and West Third
districts many residents were listed as grocers or as clerks in grocery stores operated by other
Italians : later, in the '30s and '40s, employers include Safeway and Pay-N-Takit, while the
traditional occupations continue.
The Westside and Railroad Square hotels housed many Italian immigrants before they
established themselves in the community. Several hotels were Italian named and operated:
D'Italia Unita (1880s - 1910s), Fior d'Italia (1920s), Battaglia (1890s - 1910s), Torino, and
Toscano (1870s- 1930s), and some of these had wineries, wine cellars, and bocce ball courts
("bowling alley" in Sanborn map) at various times.
Italian names in the 1883-84 directory are few but already in some of the traditional occupations
and locations:
Louis Bacigalupi, driver fishwagon, r W end 8th (Natale's father)
Peter Bertolani, clothing, groceries, liquor, & r, 61-63 4th
P. Bertolli, gardener, Sonoma Road 5 miles from town
Noa Fazze, tanner, r W end 7th
Onesto Fougoli (sic), saloon & res. cor 7th & Wilson
Thomas Garbarino, gardener, r W end 8th
C.L. Gardella, prop. Hotel D'Italia Unita, 6th & RR
Lawrence Gardella, laborer, boards Hotel D'Italia Unita
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L. Genazzi, farmer, 170 acres
Peter Giannini (no occupation or address)
Alfonso Montichelli, saloon, 4th & Davis
Antonio Nobili, barkeeper with Montichelli, 4th & Davis
V. Piezzi, 160 acres
In the 1913 Santa Rosa classified, Italian names are clustered in the occupations of Grocers,
Retail Liquor, Meat Markets, Restaurants, Shoes and Shoemakers, Clothing, and Dairies, with
all the businesses (except the outlying dairies) either in Westside and around the tracks or
downtown in the Fourth Street area. In the 1910 census the small number of Italians who lived
east of the tracks (about 30 households or individuals) were in the same types of occupations
as their Westside countrymen: tannery laborers, shoemakers, stonecutters, winemaker,
proprietors and employees of restaurants, groceries, and pasta factory. According to LeBaron
and other sources, it was common for many of these workers, or other members of their
households, to take additional seasonal work in the canneries or picking fruit and hops.
By the 1920s, when block book and reverse directory information becomes available, Italian
names form a clear majority in the Westside and West Third neighborhoods and a significant
minority in Ripley, among both residents and owners. LeBaron reports that in the late nineteenth
century "the area where most Italians lived was dubbed Tar Flat by the townspeople because of
the tarpaper roofs on the small houses . Residents felt the sting of being 'from the other side of
the tracks' " (p.85): an 1888 complaint about sewer service identifies Tar Flat as "the Wilson and
Morgan Streets area, 5th to 10th" (p.122)—what is now considered Ripley. The Italian
neighborhood expanded west through the early twentieth century, as the ages of the Westside
houses show, and in the 1920s beyond North Dutton to the adjoining blocks of Trowbridge and
Hewitt Streets. The historically Italian neighborhoods to this day have a distinctive somewhat
rural character, with gardens and sometimes stonework (original structure or later adornment)
on the foundations, entries, and landscaping.
St. Rose Catholic Church is located near the Italian neighborhoods. It was the church for the
whole Santa Rosa area, and not thought of as a national parish, but was a social and spiritual
center for the Italian community.
Other community organizations and activities included
fraternal groups—those noted in the WPA survey of 1936 were the Sons of Italy, ItalianAmerican Club, and a Verdi Circle of the Druids (p.228-30). There was an annual Columbus
Day celebration with a queen and a ball, and "social events included dancing at the ice cream
store on Pierson Street…and 40 to 50 people playing bocce ball at the Callori's" (1975 Westside
Neighborhood Study, in Press Democrat, February 3, 1975). The cannery ran a nursery for
workers' children, and other social-service functions were served by people like Natale
Bacigalupi and cannery superintendent Carniglia who helped immigrant cannery workers with
citizenship papers and letter-writing (LeBaron, Press Democrat).
Significance of Property Types of the Italian Community
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Residential Neighborhoods
These three neighborhoods are historically where Santa Rosa's working Italian population was
centered, Westside the oldest, largest, and most closely tied to jobs in the businesses and
industries along the railroad, West Third developed mostly after the turn of the century and
home to many market gardeners and produce dealers, related to the larger market gardens out
West Third in the Davidson Tract, Hewitt developed mostly in the 1920s by Italian-named
owners expanding from Westside. These neighborhoods, as well as Ripley and St. Rose on the
other side of the tracks with smaller but significant Italian populations, were more contiguous
than today, though today's strong traffic boundaries generally coincide with historic differences
in the neighborhoods.
Directories, censuses, and ownership records all show the west side residents in the first half of
this century to have been predominantly Italian, working class, and homeowners. Their
occupations clustered around food and wine, hotels and restaurants, leather, and the local
stone industry. A significant number of these working people developed second houses which
they rented to countrymen, and home winemaking and "vegetable gardens sustained families
through the Depression" (Press Democrat, February 3, 1975). All three neighborhoods retain
this character of small-scale self-sufficient living—gardening and home improvements are on a
scale that one working household can do themselves. In 1975 the city's Westside Neighborhood
study enumerated among the neighborhood's assets "A significant number of Italian residents
that promotes the history of Santa Rosa and the Italian culture," and "four of the nine members
of the neighborhood's citizens 'committee which developed the report had Italian surnames"
(ib.).
Italian Businesses
Many of Santa Rosa's Italian residents historically worked in businesses related to food and
lodging, and buildings associated with some of these businesses survive. The Hunt Bros.-Del
Monte-California Packing Corp. cannery, though not Italian-owned, was a major employer of
Westside residents, and had an Italian superintendent. A number of hotels around and west of
Railroad Square were Italian enterprises, and housed newly-arrived Italian workers . These
included the Forni, Torino, Venezia, Toscano, D'Italia Unita, and Battaglia Hotels . One of these
survives, much altered and embedded in a newer building, as Lena's at 509 Adams: the 2-story
portion, the Battaglia Hotel, has been continuously owned and operated by the same family for
over a century. The most famous of the Italian groceries, Bacigalupi' s and Bertolani's on Fourth
Street, described by LeBaron as community gathering places and mutual-aid centers, were
downtown and have vanished, but smaller historically Italian groceries survive in North Railroad
Square and Ripley. Paolini's was shoe repair, then clothing, at 1510 Wilson since 1920, and
other Italian-owned businesses are along Wilson Street in the North Railroad commercial
district. The North Bay Monument Company was originally Fisher & Kinslow's marble works, but
Massimo Galeazzi joined the partnership in the 1930s, so it represents a tie to the Italian
stonework tradition.
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Stone Buildings
The four Italian stonemasons, Forni, Galeazzi, Maroni, and Sodini, are important in Santa Rosa
history both for the imposing buildings they left behind and for their place in economic and
ethnic history. This Italian consortium ran a major local industry, provided jobs for their
countrymen, and constructed some of the city's major architectural monuments. This tradition
filtered down to smaller-scale and utilitarian work, whether by professionals or by ownerbuilders.
Basalt Quarrying
The basalt deposits running east of Santa Rosa to Sonoma began to be exploited for paving
and building blocks in the mid-1880s, at the same time that Italian immigration to Santa Rosa
reached significant proportions. Though the quarries remained Anglo-American owned, a group
of Northern Italian stonemasons came to dominate the industry as brokers and contractors for
stones and labor. The quarry laborers were mostly Italian, and "most of them came from
Tuscany in Northern Italy, many from the district of Massa-Carrara, having trained in the worldfamous marble pits there" (LeBaron, Press Democrat). The Santa Rosa and Carquinez Railway,
a SP branch arranged by Mark McDonald , began operation through the quarry area in 1887,
with shipping points at Annadel, Melitta, and Kenwood Stations, where funicular railways
brought the blocks down from the quarries . Kenwood—well east of Santa Rosa—was and is a
small town: LeBaron describes Melitta as "very nearly a small town—a general store (Baldi's), a
barber shop and those necessary taverns around the railroad station," but does not indicate that
there were residences. Galeazzi's Rincon Hotel/Stone House a short distance east of town
apparently did house blockmakers who worked in the quarries beyond. According to LeBaron
the industry tapered off after automobiles made stone paving unacceptable in the 1910s; use of.
the blocks for building in Santa Rosa continued into the 1920s, for example the Railway Express
depot in Railroad Square (1925 building permit) and the Bertoli houses in the West Third Street
district (1924).
Source Document
The text above is excerpted from the following report available at www.srpast.org: Cultural
Heritage Survey of the City of Santa Rosa, Bloomfield, Anne., Anne Bloomfield Architectural
History, August 1989.
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